Epsom College

Independent school in South East UK

“The platform enables me to track the progress of every student's application. I can see who is on track and who isn’t. That’s a great advantage when you have 175 students."

Nick Russell, Head of Sixth Form

Why was Unifrog of interest anyway?

“Schools are complicated organisations and if you bring in a new system that’s going to impact upon every member of staff, you want to be certain that it’s actually going to be worth the effort.

I could quickly see that Unifrog would be a system that would make a lot of teachers’ lives easier, particularly housemasters.

Staff training

The training from other IT companies in the past has been very badly delivered. Often it is just way too complicated.

However, the way Unifrog team led the sessions was exemplary: it was concise and practical. Any problems that came up during the session were dealt with really quickly and efficiently.

They were very keen to make the whole process of of getting us trained and ready to embed the platform in our school as painless, clear and as fluent as possible, and that was really appreciated.”

Student launch

The launch to pupils were extremely helpful; quick, clear, practical and effective. All the students could see how Unifrog would make life easier. They left feeling energised and empowered.

I was really impressed with Daniel who gave the demonstration, he was clear and engaging and there was an air of efficiency about him with a nice touch of humour as well.

The impact on students

The process of applying to a UK university is daunting and confusing and rather frightening. It’s now a £40,000 decision which is an enormous decision for someone aged 17 to have to make.

So having the Unifrog search engines with the ability to rank and filter courses, and having best-practice guidance at each stage, alleviates a lot of the stress that revolves around this process. It still is a stressful experience, but I think it would be a lot more stressful without the blessed help of Unifrog!

The impact on a Head of Sixth Form

“The platform enables me to track the progress of every student's application. I can see who is on track and who isn’t. That’s a great advantage when you have 175 students.

For example, before Unifrog there was no real way of knowing how much research each student had done. Unifrog enables me to see how seriously the students have taken the searching process.

Another big advantage of Unifrog is that it provides a central editable space for the student’s Personal Statement. You can track all the different iterations of that Personal Statement - from the student’s first stumbling paragraph, to the finished product. It’s easy for lots of different members of staff to contribute and assist in this process if required, and the system even tracks each staff member’s interventions.”

Teachers

“With Unifrog you can see with one click important details like what a student has considered applying for, what they’re actually applying for, what competencies they are looking to stress, and what they are putting in their personal statement. You can then tailor your reference to ensure that it supports what the student actually wants to do.

When you are extraordinarily busy and pushed for time you can’t afford to research that kind of information for each student, but now you can access that information almost instantaneously with Unifrog.

Probably the most useful single feature of the platform for teachers is that the person who is writing the Overall Reference can draw all the Subject References together quickly and easily into an easily editable draft of the Overall Reference.

In the past this information would come to you via disparate emails - you would spend a lot of time searching your inbox. To now have all this information in one place is a Godsend. Just this one feature saves staff an enormous amount of time.”

Feedback

“One of the things I’ve been particularly struck by and impressed by with Unifrog has been their willingness to tailor their standard product - which in itself is very good - to meet the specific needs of an institution; that’s impressive.”

One particular student...

“We had one particular student who was very, perhaps excessively, aspirational. We had to pull out all the stops to help him reach his goals. For example we needed to have a perfectly produced reference and an outstanding personal statement for him to have any hope of receiving an offer.

Being able to give a lot of advice on this student’s Personal Statement that he could then act upon immediately did ultimately result in him receiving an offer. If the university had been looking purely at the student’s grades and their predicted grades I think this would have been unlikely. Unifrog’s editing facilities for references and statements helped immensely with the process of supporting this student to success.”